A Fish Out of Water
by Kei the Average
Summary: Captain Haddock has an uneventful day at sea, until a redheaded merman gets tangled in one of his nets.


It had mostly been a normal day for Captain Haddock. He and his men out on another fishing voyage, hoping to collect that which could be sold at tomorrow's fish market. Today, however, had been particularly slow, and despite his orders to drop several nets more than usual, they'd barely gotten so much as a bite. "It's just because of the weather," he assured himself, writing down figures from today's so-called "progress." "It's cold now; but by the time things warm up, we'll be back in business."

While in thought he found himself drifting off to sleep at his desk, in spite of the long, uneventful day. About an hour later, he felt his shoulder being shaken violently.

"Captain! Get up! You must help!"

Haddock opened his eyes and looked up at Skut, his Estonian first mate. The blonde man looked quite flustered, panicked even.

"Skut?" Haddock instantly got up, fearing the worst. It wasn't like Skut to panic for no reason. "What is it? What's the matter?"

"Come! You must come!" Without saying more, Skut grabbed Haddock's arm and nearly dragged him across deck.

But Haddock stopped him in his tracks, and pulled his arm away. "Blistering barnacles, Skut! Won't you just tell me what this is about?"

Not a moment too soon after he had asked that, he heard a terrified scream that sent him running towards the source again at light speed. The sight he beheld when he reached his destination threw him in for quite a loop.

There were his men, crowded menacingly around a younger man of whom Haddock decided was the one who had screamed. He was quite a pleasant sight; smaller and slighter than his crew mates, with fair skin, light blue eyes and red hair that was spiked at the front.

But the most striking feature of all, the captain noticed, was a shining blue fish tail that the boy had in place of legs, tangled in a fish net.

Haddock's eyes widened in horror as he saw one of his men, a large, gruff-faced man named Allan, grab the merman by the arm, a cosh in his other hand, a villainous smile on his face.

The captain quickly burst through the crowd and grabbed the sailor's arm holding the cosh.

"Thundering typhoons! What's gotten into you brutes? Can't you see you've frightened the poor creature?"

"Don't worry, Captain, that's exactly what we want," Allan replied smugly.

"Don't speak nonsense!" Haddock shouted at him. "Get out of here!" He turned to the others. "Scram, all of you! Bashi-bazouks! Monsters! Sea scum! Go, or I'll have you all clamped in irons!" All of them, including their brutish leader ran off in fear of Captain Haddock's divine punishment.

"And if you lay so much as a finger on him again, I'll throw you overboard!" the captain threatened.

He spit in their direction, still fired up from the commotion. "A dirty lot, the whole of them. Especially that Allan. Preying on an innocent thing for fun, without a lick of remorse! They'll get what's coming to them soon enough." He turned to Skut, who was still standing there, shocked in place. "Okay, out with it! I want to know exactly what happened."

Skut finally found his voice at the captain's command. "We were at net waiting for fish to come," he began in his broken English. "Suddenly we feel big tug and think it is large fish, so we pull up the net. But we capture merman by accident. The merman beg not to be hurt and shed tear, and…"

Trailing off, the Estonian man pointed down next to the merman. A large, shiny blue pearl was buried under an entanglement of net.

"Blistering barnacles…" Haddock picked it up, cradling it gently in his palm. It was beautiful; surely someone would pay a tidy sum for such a rarity.

Suddenly everything made sense. "I see now," he said. "Those pirates were trying to get more pearls by hurting him and making him cry. Those scalawags, I thought I had taught them better manners than that."

He turned to the merman in question, who lay there silently, still hesitant and apparently afraid of what possibly lay in store for him. Haddock slowly knelt to him, trying to make it apparent to the poor thing that he meant him no harm.

"I'm sorry about that," Haddock began his apology, keeping his voice gentle and sincere, as if he were talking to a child. "And I'm sorry for anything that my sorry excuse for a crew may have done to you. You must think terribly of humans, now, I'm sure. But I promise you that I have no intention of hurting you." He finished, reaching his hand out to the merman's tangled tail. "Please, at least let me help you out of this contraption."

The merman seemed quite reluctant at this notion at first, shrinking back as the captain touched one of the scales on his tail as he grabbed at the net. But he relaxed when Haddock began unwinding the net from his fins as gently as possible.

"Don't worry," Haddock assured him, giving him a kind smile. "Any sailor worth his salt knows his knots like he knows the sea. You'll be out of this in no time." And sure enough Haddock was able to pull the wretched net off the boy and set it aside. The captain stepped back so that he could properly stretch out his tail out of its formerly uncomfortable position. The merman smiled gratefully at his new acquaintance, a stunning, bright smile.

The captain felt a blush rushing to his cheeks without warning, but he smiled back. He held a friendly hand out to him. "Good, you aren't injured," Haddock sighed with relief. "That's better, eh? Would you like some help back into the water?" The merman hesitantly reached back to him, signaling his new-found trust in the captain.

Haddock gently reached his other arm around the boy and picked him up to where the captain could carry him. He marveled at how light the merman was in his arms.

Carefully holding him over the edge of the boat—he was not quite sure yet how he'd release the lad back into the sea—he turned his head to where he was eye-to-eye with him.

"I suppose this is where we must part," Haddock said to him, almost a little regretful of this moment. But he knew it was the right thing to do; it wouldn't have felt right to him at all to keep something with a human soul as some pet to make money off of, as much as his wretched crew likely wanted him to.

But even so for only a moment, he wanted to gaze into those lovely blue eyes for just a while longer. This merman's appearance was simply hypnotic—from his smile, to his hair, to the simple way his scales shined in the sunlight.

Suddenly the captain felt the merman grab the back of his head and pull him closer. Their lips met, only for a split second of bliss at the back of his mind. But all too soon it ended with a happy whisper of "Thank you," into the captain's ear. And with that, the merman wriggled out of his arms and dove safely into the water and out of sight.

Captain Haddock stayed right where he was, frozen still from the merman's kiss. Snapping back into reality, he reached into his coat pocket, where the beautiful, blue pearl, his only remnant of today's fiasco, had been safely stowed away as a keepsake.

Skut, who had witnessed the event, walked toward the captain. He put his hand on Haddock's shoulder, smiling.

"I hear kiss from merman is good omen."

Captain Haddock looked out into the sea, and back to the pearl in his hand. He smiled back.

"Maybe it is, Skut. Maybe it is."


End file.
